Im writing this as a player of both, the after release game and trying the Afterlife expansion.

Regarding the Afterlife expansion, i should just be called a whole game remake. The changes done to the whole experience make it feel... complete. The Afterlife expansion breathes life to the game in a sense that they got rid of the awful Soul mechanics to add more metroidvania mechanics.

But before you say its now a Metroidvania, its not fully one, The same style of the original game is still here, just polished with metroidvania mechanics. The parts that needed work were done exceptionally well thanks to the player feedback. One of those is movement. Movement in this Expansion is much, MUCH smoother than the original release.

Now into the meat of the expansion, the combat is really enjoyable. Rn im trying to go as a Wizard with magic, and as someone how played the wizard before, its just more pleasant and enjoyable to do so. I have played almost all classes, but before it was clear there was one that was worth it and one that doesnt. Now i really feel that there is a path to make your own OP prefered class. Controls are polished and well optimized for the game. You can combo with the new Metroidvania moves while keeping the old Death Gambit weapons.

Talent System is now more rich to try, with many new talents that now are worth something if you decide to invest. Now, the new chance is more talents to spend, and while on a first walkthrough you might not get them all, thats a new challenge for the New Game Plus.

Story is now enriched, and while i havent played much at the moment of this review, the presentation is less cryptic and more colorful. Old characters feel more alive and now the story has a true sense of progression.

Honestly, while im not deep into the game, the elements i see are enough to warrant a: 8/10

While this might change after i finish, i can 100% say this is one of the best Indies on the Souls/Metroidvania category. If you have some more money for a indie, this is now a solid and great choice to play.

Quick Note: If you intend on playing Death's Gambit with a controller (which I recommend) that uses DualShock 4, you'll need to enable controller support on Steam: Settings -> Controller -> General Controller Settings -> Turn on '[Your controller type] Configuration Support'.

I couldn't get my 360 controller to work for the first half hour or so, and almost refunded the game as a result. I don't want anyone else running into this issue, so I'm writing the solution here for you.


Death's Gambit is an action platformer that is inspired largely by the Dark Souls series. In particular, it seems to pay a lot of homage to original Dark Soul 1, with world design that mimics the same layout and sense of guide-freedom, as well as slow and methodical pace to combat with a heavy emphasis on stamina management. Though with a more direct approach to storytelling, through dialogue / cutscenes, and a plot focused more on the player character, rather than the events of the world.

There is a ton of incredible game design here, and I feel that much of it has unfortunately gone unnoticed due to the fact that the central gameplay - combat - has a frustrating learning curve. So I will start off by discussing what I think is great about the game.

Level Design
The layout of the map is the aspect that stood out most to me, and felt very intelligent. To make it simple, there is one long passage - the Rider's Passage - that takes you by horse from one end of the map to the other, with (almost) every zone being weaved around and connected to it. One end is the tutorial area; one end has the tunnel to the final area; and in the center, you have your main sanctuary that houses all of the important NPCs. This hub area is built in the same fashion as Firelink Shrine was in Dark Souls 1: there are multiple different paths to take, but only one is the intended path. You are free to go anywhere from the start, so it is up to you to figure out (or decide for yourself) how to progress.

Enemy Placement
Just like with Level Design, the way that enemies are laid out across the map is cleverly done. You'll see this right away in the tutorial zone, how enemies are arranged into groups of different combinations that result in every encounter feeling unique. This, to me, can even make individual enemies seem distinct and memorable. I would describe it as a very hand-crafted feeling.

Bosses
All of the bosses are greatly varied and have many different attacks and multiple phases. The game does a good job of encouraging you to get back up and keep trying after you've died, as shards (which you use to level up skills) are distributed based on how far down you get the boss' health, allowing you to increase a skill or two and be stronger next time. A marker will then appear on their health bar, to show you how far you've managed to get, and you'll have to pass that mark to get more shards.

Once you've defeated a boss, you also unlock the ability to face them again as "Heroic" versions. In these situations, you'll be facing stronger variants of the existing bosses, but they are now equipped with altered attack patterns that require you to learn even more patterns. It's a harder fight, but also a chance to receive even more rewards beside just shards.


Okay, now for the Combat. I think it's reasonable to state that if none of the previous topics interested you at all, then you should probably just click off the page and look for another game. This is arguably the weakest aspect of Death's Gambit.

I believe that there are three main complaints that people have (ordered by significance):

1. Stamina management - this game takes stamina very seriously. It is slow to regenerate, and attacks use up a large amount to perform. I don't know whether this is intended design or not, but what I can say is that if you are someone whose instinct is to mash the attack or dodge button, you will struggle with this game.
   
   
2. Weight/Feel - attack animations just simply don't feel all that powerful. Death's Gambit does not manage to replicate the satisfying sense of power that you get from swinging a weapon in a Soulsborne game.
   
   
3. Hitboxes - I'm listing this one down here because I don't know if it's still an issue in the game. When I first played through it, back in December, I can't recall anything that really felt unfair or nonsense. But I do know that poor hitboxes were an issue at the game's launch, a few months prior.

In short, the combat system is relatively standard, but is strict and can be quite unforgiving. It can (and has) certainly been done better before.


Aside from that, the only issues I personally had with the game is that it does feel rather short, and lacking a lot of variety in terms of weapons. My first playthrough (Wizard) took around 15 hours (though it didn't really feel like it), and in that time I used the same spell book I started with for the entire game.

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Let's put this all together: Death's Gambit is kind of difficult to recommend. While there is certainly a group of people that will enjoy it, a lot will be put off early after the first hour or two.

If you aren't phased by the idea of average-at-best combat, and the other parts of the game sound interesting, then I would recommend Death's Gambit. But if proper Soulslike gameplay is an absolute essential to the experience for you, I suggest skipping this title.

Pretty good game over-all.

This game should be played with a controller, this will remove a lot of the 'clunkiness' going on.

Good Stuff:

- Music is amazingly good.
- Graphics, simply beautiful.
- Bosses are rather challenging with a heroic re-match option.
- Most of the melee abilities are pretty fun to use.
- Some cool cutscene stuff between deaths every now and again.
- NG+

Bad Stuff;
- Lack of items - I played through the entire game with the Assassin using dagger/spear and never changed my weapon once. The game has an enchanting system but its pretty lackluster.
- Useles Stats - Whilst there are quite a few stats in the game, only 3 stats are useful to pick up. Your damage stat (Str, Dex or Int), Endurance(Stamina) and Vitality(Health). A lot of the bosses are incredibly difficult without enough damage or stamina(looking at you Galaxy Mage).
- Weapons feel a bit off. The spear didn't feel weighty at all. The daggers were okay.

Eh Stuff:
- Voice Acting- Some characters are voiced, whilst your main character is not. Some areas have no VO at all.
- Story is whatever.

There's a really good game in here buried beneath some clunky combat and a general lack of polish. While not a radical innovation in the soulslike genre, Death's Gambit does bring some really cool new ideas to the table that future games could stand to learn from.

I'll get the negatives out the way first, because they're the main stumbling block that will determine whether or not you're able to enjoy this game. First there's the technical issues. Death's Gambit has a whole bunch of them despite it being several months since the game's launch at the time of writing this review. None of the ones that I experienced were outright gamebreaking, but they were persistent dings on the quality of the experience from start to finish. The game has a lot of stuttering when accessing the level up interface, doesn't save resolution changes between play sessions, and has strange text scaling issues that make everything very difficult to read when playing in a window. I actually had to tell the game to run without the use of my GPU, otherwise I got persistent visual glitches in the form of black lines on my screen. One boss fight never loaded in the music (even on repeat attempts), my character sometimes got stuck in certain spots, NPCs would glitch a few feet off the ground at times, and ladders in general behave in a very finicky manner that seems to mess with hitboxes, causing difficulties when jumping on to them and getting you stuck at times if you take damage while climbing.

The other big problem I feel Death's Gambit has is the core combat. It's generally awkward and sluggish, combining a floaty feeling with extreme input buffering and a lack of enemy collision that results in many deaths feeling like they're a result of you fighting the control scheme rather than the enemies in the game. The fact that your character goes through enemies rather than bumping up against them turns a lot of fights into incredibly weird exchanges where you pirouette back and forth trying to keep their hitbox inside your swings by turning left and right, since otherwise the forward momentum of your attacks will carry you through the enemy and out of range. This applies to NPCs as well, which makes blocking and parrying very awkward when enemies walk through your character on one swing and then flip around to hit you in the back with the next.

There's also a heavy reliance on bosses that hold their attacks (an initially neat, but sadly overused Dark Souls trick of baiting you into dodging early). This works a lot better in a 3D game where the full swing is animated, but in a 2D game with limited animation frames this generally results in a few frames of wind-up to telegraph that the attack is coming, then a period of waiting where there's no way for you tell when it's about to land save for memorising how many seconds to count in your head. As a result precise parrying and dodging feels like it requires far too much trial and error to make it effective, which incentivises less interesting strategies where you either spam your dodge roll, run out of range, or just hold down the block button. This kind of thing is probably mitigated on repeat playthroughs, but on an initial run I found it made a lot of bosses feel far more bland than they would have been if they'd had more precisely telegraphed attacks.

Those are really my main gripes with Death's Gambit, and the combat one is pretty big, but despite all of that I still enjoyed the game quite a lot, because everything else about it is kind of awesome. Visually the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous. There are some stunning, and I mean stunning animations in this game, combined with a fantastic soundtrack, great voice acting, and beautiful environments that really draw you into the experience. While the plot didn't really sink its hooks into me until towards the end, it's still interesting enough to stand on its own two feet (despite the obvious Dark Souls influence), and it has an emotional core that's likely to tug on your heartstrings a wee bit more than most entries in this genre.

One of my favourite mechanics Death's Gambit adds to the formula is the ability to replay boss fights at any time by returning to their room and challenging a heroic version with nastier abilities. You can do this as many times as you want for big chunks of experience and rare items, making it a much more fun way of grinding than chopping up regular enemies over and over again.

Character progression and exploration in general is very satisfying overall, with lots of interesting and varied items to collect, weapon and armour upgrades to invest in, talent points that can reward you with some cool skills, and your standard core stats to bump up. It always feels like its worth it to explore and take on optional challenges, and there's a whole host of new game+ difficulties and different builds to explore, resulting in what seems like a lot of replay value.

Despite my complaints about the combat, the game as a whole is designed pretty well around it. The pace is slow enough that you can work around the jank, and it never feels brutally punishing or unfair. There are some clever bits of level design that bait you into traps you could've easily seen coming if you'd paid more attention, and the playful “ha ha, got you!” moments are up there with some of the best in the souls series.

The bosses, as well, are for the most part very diverse and interesting. There's an awesome “insanity” encounter, there are one-on-one fights against evenly-matched opponents, giant monstrosities that dwarf half your screen, noble knights, beastly monsters, futuristic techno-warriors, and eldritch abominations. While the combat doesn't do the bosses many favours, the creativity in the design and the diversity of the lineup makes up for it (even if the creative influences behind one or two of them are rather direct!).

Overall, Death's Gambit won't be a game for everyone. It's just not tight or satisfying enough in its core gameplay, and the lack of technical polish really stands out. If you're willing to spend a couple of hours warming up to the combat, however, there's a lot to be enjoyed here. The audiovisual presentation is immaculate, the heart of the soulslike adventure is executed very well, and there are some cool creative wrinkles that keep the experience feeling fresh rather than derivative. I enjoyed my time with Death's Gambit and left feeling very satisfied by the end. I might even go back and do another playthrough now that I'm finished.

I so want to give this game a glowing review, but I just can't. The story, the art, the characters, and the combat system are all amazing -- or at least sufficient. Its easily one of the prettiest most satisfying metroidvanias around. Yet I can only recommend it with caveats. I play quite a bit of metroidvanias, but I'm not a completionist. I want the 'good' ending and don't care to go through a NG+ cycle to get it. So I usually look up the flags for the GE and that is where this game starts to come apart.
The game possess a game mechanic called will which increases with deaths and you must be below a minimum threshold to achieve the good ending. You heard that right -- die too much and no GE for you. Certain legendary bosses will reduce your will on defeat to help you get under the threshold. Problem is these legendary bosses are no cake walk either and you will die many times. It becomes a numbers game as you grow more and more frustrated watching your will tick up as your prospects of the GE go down until defeating the boss is 'just' enough to almost break even from the number of times he gibbed you.
So you say to yourself -- ok.. I'll go grind like there is tomorrow so I have the stats to make sure I can beat these bosses without dozens of deaths -- nope.. Your first play through you are capped at level 150 with subsequent playthroughs only increasing that cap by 50 -- and your damaging stat hard capped at 150. Vitality scaling also makes it so even if capped you will live through oh one extra hit from a boss before going down.
So you can't get strong enough to trivialize the 'heroic' fights and anything over 200 deaths through the course of a play through basically ensures your the lesser ending. So instead your supposed to what spend 3 hours learning to do a heroic with narry a single mistake so your NEXT playthrough you can get closer to the good ending? No Thanks. I'll go watch someone with more time than me's Lets Play and move on the next Metroidvania. Its been a fantastic game, but its not good enough to justify doubling and tripling my time in it to see a few extra scenes.

This is a brilliant game that deserves better reviews, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Pros:
Great storyline with some clever foreshadowing. Incredibly tragic but never gets too heavy-handed. Does a good job presenting a moral dilemma that is ACTUALLY a dilemma.

The graphics are absolutely mesmerizing. I spent several minutes early on just running around pressing buttons to gawk at the animations.

Every character is memorable and endearing. The excellent voicework helps here. Get ready to have like six or seven new waifus AND husbandos.

There are lots of bosses and each of them is well-designed. Lots of them have tricks you can pull off to make things easier on yourself, and if you're having serious trouble, the game is non-linear enough that you can go do something else for a bit instead of having to grind.

Balance seems good. You never really NEED to grind and the game gives you enough cool loot and "shards" (souls) to keep on top of things, at least if you're investing wisely in your stats.

The game is shortish (though not for an indie--about 15hrs for my first run), but what's there is packed to the gills with high-quality content. I never felt like the game was being padded out or getting repetitive.

When you beat the game you get to CHOOSE your NG+ level within a certain range, which is a mighty nice feature.


Cons:
There is some concern in the reviews that the combat feels clunky. Honestly, it's not clunky so much as demanding and if you can play the first Dark Souls then you can play Death's Gambit, but if you're not up for a punishing game then by all means give this one a skip.

Some of the bosses are a bit too chatty with too few lines of dialogue, in particular the Phoenix boss, who has like three lines that she repeats ad nauseum.

There is not as much sprawling content (weapon types, spells, etc.) as your typical Soulslike. I wouldn't even consider this a point off except the game is VERY clearly shouting "Hey, play this if you like Dark Souls!" so that could be misleading if you're expecting something of the same scale.

Some screens are huge enough and covered with enough snow/particle effects that I did end up with some serious lag, and there's not a lot in the way of video settings.

I ran into a few glitches near the end with getting briefly stuck on the terrain and that kind of thing--NBD for me, but I can see it leading to a few frustrating and unfair deaths if it happens at the wrong time or in the wrong place. I imagine this will get better as time goes on.


Overall:
If you want a challenging, bite-size Soulslike with a rich story and atmosphere, give this one a spin. It's not for everyone but personally I found it absolutely mesmerizing.

Is it short? Yes
Is it full of bugs? No
Did it fulfill expectations that I had? No
Do I regret buying it? No
Did I like it? Yes
Do I recommend it? Yes

Death's Gambit does a lot of things right, really right; But unfortunately also does a lot of things wrong.

The art style, music score, most of the story direction, setting, atmosphere, voice acting and the characters you meet throughout the story are memorable and feel like they've had thought and effort put in to them. The shortfalls of the game unfortunately are within it's base mechanics, progression and some of the passive combat elements, like stamina.

The combat unfortunately manages to feel Clunky throughout most of the game, with many of the different weapons. I found myself getting frequently "combat locked" with too many dead animation frames at the end of attacks, meaning I'd be mashing my dodge or guard key, with nothing happening because the game decided it was a good idea to make me wait after attacking for a good second or so before I can make any other action. Unfortunately, this slows down the entire pace of the game and instead of teaching the user to react and learn the bosses patterns, it instead just teaches the user to keep attacking and dodge the 'fatal' or 'big damage' abilities, and to just kill the boss before it kills you. The moment that I used a mechanic in the game that allows me to forego healing in favor of damage, the entire game became a lot easier.

Stamina is a massive problem I have with this game. Certain bosses would do up to 4 attacks in a row, tracking your exact position throughout the entirety of it, and the game without boosting your stamina points literally doesn't allow for enough dodges to be able to avoid damage. If I was the developers, I'd massively consider reducing the cost of dodging, or even rewarding the player for "successfully dodging" certain attacks by rewarding stamina back. Pace is what is lacking in the combat, and I feel this would somewhat fix that problem.

Overall, combat aside, the game was enjoyable to experience. Certain elements of the story didn't make much sense and it honestly felt like the devs were trying to cram too much in to one experience. With seemingly random lovecraftian elements thrown in to the story mix at a whim and a boss that almost 1:1 resembles the end boss of Undertale just thrown in to the game, I feel like the saying "Less is More" could have been applied here. More work in to the areas that made sense in favor of working on areas thrown in without much thought would have left with a much better impression on the story and atmosphere of the game.

Despite all of this, the story, art, music, and what remained of the combat is enough for me to reccomend this game. For White Rabbit's first game they have done a fantastic job and I hope to see them learn from the mistakes that were also made with Death's Gambit. They've done enough to impress me and I will certainly be checking their future work.

Afterlife has changed everything. GET THIS GAME!

Originally Deaths Gambit was a short, fun yet somewhat flawed Soulslike with some really cool ideas like sacrificing heals for extra damage, boss rematches that changed the boss fights etc. Now, many years after the original release, the DLC Afterlife has released.

HOLY $@#*! This game is a full on metroidvania now! multiple abilites that allow you to backtrack and crisscross a huge map (oh yeah it actually has a map now!) there is a ton of new stuff, boss reworks, all new bosses, enemies, entire areas. The game has a massive amount of content now and Im just scratching the surface. It controls better, it runs smoother, the story makes coherent sense and there is way more actual humor than it has any right to have.

My favorite thing about the original Deaths Gambit was the awesome boss fights and they are still the highlight here, but the exploration is now a equal part, you are rewarded very well for exploring every nook and cranny, and there are always multiple paths to check out at any given time.

There is a huge amount of build variety now, tons of new weapons and trinkets, the soundtrack is good, the art is good, the voice acting is amazing...

I literally cant stop gushing about how much of a change this game has gone through for the better, this is a devs love letter at its finest, and I cannot recommend this enough, this should be at the top of your list of any genre, this is the best release in September, and quit possible the best indie of the year for me.

Absolute 10 out of freaking 10 well done dev

Death's Gambit is an excellent game. It won't be for everyone, but it was perfect for me.

You play as Sorun, a solider from the kingdom of Vados sent to Siradon as part of an expedition to obtain the source of immortality. You die on your way in, but Death brings you back to (un)life and offers you a contract: you get to keep living if you work for him. You sign in blood (naturally) and begin to work your way to the source of immortality.

Your true purpose in Siradon is to try to find your mother, Everly, who went on a previous expedition and never returned. A secondary goal, assuming you can't find her, is Sorun's desire to be remembered. Death's goal seems to be to get rid of the source of immortality, but you get hints of something deeper going on the further you progress.

The game is a 2D soulslike platformer. The expected soulslike things in the game like Estus Flasks (Phoenix Plumes), souls (essence), and bonfires (Death Statues) are all in the game. An interesting twist on the formula is that you don't drop your essence when you die, so you're never in danger of losing currency/experience. Instead when you die you drop one of you Phoenix Plume charges, which you can pick back up or spend essence to regain it from a Death Statue.

Bosses in Death's Gambit are where you may end up spending the most time. They can be rather difficult at times, and they will take the same kind of pattern learning that is necessary in other soulslike games. Another unique feature of this game is that it keeps track of how far you've made it on a boss and rewards you accordingly. If your best run against a boss was getting them down to 25% health, the game will give you 75% of the total essence reward you would get from beating it. You don't get rewarded every time you fight, but getting something back for getting further on a boss feels good.

Throughout the game are journals you can find that give you a short lore blurb on each boss. There are two to find for each boss, and each one you find permanently increases the damage you deal against that boss by 5%. This just feels like a nice feature that rewards exploration.

Each boss (except maybe one) also has the option of unlimited rematches against a harder Heroic version of the boss after you beat it the first time. You get rewarded for each time you beat a boss on Heroic, so you can use this for farming certain items.

The pixel art in the game is really pretty, and the sound design and music can really pull you in. I absolutely love the voice acting. The fantasy theme with undercurrents of ancient super technology and cosmic horror makes the setting really feel dynamic and interesting. The themes of accepting the finality of death and the small pepperings of comedy throughout the game really make it something special to me.

I hope if you're interested you'll give it a chance.